XXXX Hospital in Colorado is my first choice for a Residency position in Pediatric Dentistry because I want a ‘hospital-based’ Pediatric Dentistry residency training program where I can gain extensive hands-on experience in treating children with rare craniofacial diseases and syndrome, emergency and trauma cases, as well as oral conscious sedation and general anesthesia. I learn best from seminars, case studies, observing, and especially clinical experience and I am most interested in clinical and translational research; your program will enable me to bridge my research training with extensive clinical experience in Pediatric Dentistry. In May of next year, 2017, I will complete joint degrees at XXXX: my DDS complemented by a PHD in Physiology with a special focus on Stem Cell Biology.

While I have not yet had the opportunity to spend much time in Colorado, Denver strikes me as the ideal community, the American city which I find most attractive for building a permanent home. The more I read about the XXXX Hospital in Denver, the more I come to feel like I am a very good fit with your hospital-based and practice-oriented program - with such diverse patients and challenging cases. I appreciate the way that your hospital is growing rapidly and expanding along with the oral biology research program at XXXX. I hope to teach within time and I see the programs and initiatives being developed at XXXX as precisely the kind of high energy and creative, cutting edge-environment where I would be most inspired and fully enabled to make my greatest contribution as an oral health educator.

I look forward to contributing to the diversity of your academic community as a woman and a dentist who is half Hispanic and half Iranian, fluent in Farsi and Spanish along with English since I come from a trilingual family. My travels and experiences with different cultures have helped to open my mind and expand my heart, thinking critically and creatively about the special challenges that we face in dentistry on a global scale and the Middle East in particular. I lived in Iran from 1988 - 1996 (Age 9-16) and I have visited Turkey (1996) Saudi Arabia (2006), Japan (2012), South Africa (2014) and Mexico (2015) and South Korea (2016). With one Hispanic and one Persian parent, I have always relished and learned from diversity, how to see the world from many different perspectives. This will help me enormously, in particular, to distinguish myself in the service of the growing numbers of primarily Spanish-speaking children in Colorado.

As a dental student, I have had the opportunity to provide intra- and extra-oral exams and apply dental sealants for children at elementary schools. I found myself connecting with them instantly. During my pediatric dentistry rotations, I had the opportunity to treat infants and found it to be a fun experience. I also observed the faculty treat a 6-month-old with cleft lip and palate by making a pedo denture prosthesis that enabled the child to drink milk and imagined how rewarding it must be to have a direct role in providing this kind of care.

I began volunteering for several events including SAMM Infante where I screened and provided prophy to residents and Pediatric patients. I was fortunate to do a two-week externship at the XXXXX and gained valuable experience performing pediatric patient evaluations, nitrous oxide sedation, local anesthesia and restorative dentistry. I also learned a great deal about behavior management, dental trauma, oral habits and anticipatory guidance. I shadowed residents and learned about sedation and the importance of the role of a pediatric dentist in assisting an endodontist when performing a root canal on children. I participated in the Healthy Home Day, providing screenings, prophy and fillings to pediatric patients. Another highlight was my attendance at the American Academy for Pediatric Dentistry Conference focusing on cleft lip and palate as well as new materials such as Silver Diamine fluoride in treating carious lesions.

XXXX DDS Program has equipped me for excellence in patient care. I applied to the program and was accepted in 2010 with full scholarship funding support through the Institutional National Research Service Award, COSTAR. My fascination with stem cells and their potential use in craniofacial tissue regeneration led me to Dr. XXXX’s lab and writing of my PHD dissertation on the induction of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cell differentiation into epithelial cells for regeneration of human oral mucosal epithelium using various native scaffolds. My research thus far has resulted in numerous abstracts and poster presentations, in 2012 and 2013 at the American Association of Dental Research (AADR) in Tampa, Florida and Seattle, Washington, and then the International Association of Dental Research (IADR) in Cape Town, South Africa in 2014. I am first author of two manuscripts, one currently under review and the other in preparation; as well as coauthor on another ongoing project.